


tell me i'm good

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: L being like 'lmao yikes dude', M/M, Phone Sex, drunk light being embarassing, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: L recieves a drunk call from light who is hiding in the bathroom at a party. he gets more than he bargains for.





	tell me i'm good

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry that instead of putting more effort into the library au, i wrote a semi-dark phone sex story. but i'm not sorry enough to not post it.
> 
> tw for discussion of animal death

His hotel room was quiet except for a rhythmic typing sound that emanated from his fingertips. L took a sip from his tea cup and set it back down. On the small desk provided by the hotel, he laid out his work in scattered piles. White paper towers cut across the dark shadows of the room and a blue glow blurred everything’s edges. A plate of small sandwich cookies sat next to his tea, dyed bright colors turned dull from lack of light. L took one and shoved it in his mouth, chewing as crumbs stuck to his cheeks.

From his pocket, a melodic trill sounded and L took out his phone. Across the screen was “Light Yagami” spelled out in pixelated letters. He flipped open the phone with confusion surfacing in his expression. For Light to call him at such a late hour was bizarre, almost suspicious. The only reason Light called him was to confirm when and where they’d be meeting to discuss the Kira case. They did spend more time together at university and perhaps this was Light’s attempt to strengthen their stilted friendship. Phone pressed to his ear, the first thing L heard was the thudding of a party.

“Ryuga.” Light’s voice spilled from the phone. “Are you awake?”

“What does Light need?” How trivial. Light, attending a college party and getting drunk? He hadn’t expected such a trite situation but a subconscious need to investigate led him to stay on the phone. All the noise in the background sounded hollow so he suspected Light was in a bathroom and from the party chatter outside, he was probably cramped, trying to be private. A picture painted itself of Light hunched over his phone with cheeks going pink and his cruel mouth turned slack from intoxication.

“Nothing." Someone called out for another shot and a muffled cheer rose up. “I don’t need anything. Just thought I might call. That’s what friends do, yeah?”

L chewed on another sandwich cookie. He was sure his mouth sounds were audible to Light and took a little joy in the act.

“I’m still investigating a case, if Light remembers,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better if Light called back during the day.

“Oh c’mon,” Light said. “You know what? You want to know something?”

“Do tell.”

“You’re being kind of a jerk right now.” Light’s voice fell over itself as though its weight shifted with every syllable. “You shouldn’t be such a jerk to your friend. Because we’re friends, right?”

“Light is drunk.” Finger tucked into his bottom lip, L tugged it down. This conversation was circuitous and boring. “I’m hanging up now.”

“No.” Light spoke with words like coiled fists. “Don’t.”

With a sigh, L went back to work but didn’t put the phone down. Light’s breath was a heavy burden on his ear. If he’d been standing next to L, face pressed to his own, Light couldn’t have sounded more unpleasantly close as he did over the phone. For a while, neither of them attempted to talk. As L looked through a couple personal files from a past case, he tried to make conversation if only to stop hearing Light breathe.

“Where are you?”

“Bathroom at some guy’s house.” Someone knocked and Light snapped at them. “I’m busy in here. Go use the other bathroom.” A loud groan came through a far away door and, once the noise of footsteps receded, Light sighed. “I got invited by a friend to this party. Seemed like fun.”

“I didn’t think Light enjoyed parties.”

“I like parties.” A dull thunk told L that Light had hopped up onto something. When he closed his eyes, he pictured those long legs curved over a sink, hitting the cabinet underneath, and Light’s reflection in the mirror. A perfect double reversed and facing some mirror world. L wondered if the Light in the mirror was speaking to an L as well, some shadow version of himself. “I’ve been to a lot of them. You don’t know everything about me.”

“That’s true.” L put his hand to his plate of cookies and touched only crumbs. His mouth flattened in irritation. So he was out of sweets and Light was still talking. The evening continued to get better and better. “There are many things about Light that I don’t know.”

“People invite me to parties all the time,” Light said petulantly. “I’m not drunk. The party is just loud so I’m taking a break.”

“How many drinks have you had?” L rubbed the worn space bar on his keyboard and watched it shine under his screen’s electric light. A pause stretched out while Light muttered under his breath trying to calculate what he’d consumed.

“Four drinks,” he said. “I had two beers and then some stuff from a punch bowl. I don’t know. Someone handed it to me.”

“Seems strange that Light would drink something he didn’t know the origin of.” The door to the hotel room creaked open and Watari poked his head in. He held up a tray of more sandwich cookies so L waved him over. With a little flourish, he put the tray down and swept up the empty one before leaving as quick as he’d come. “How long has Light been intoxicated for?”

“That’s none of your business.” A sour pout showed through Light’s voice. “I’m just tipsy. I’m practically sober.”

“I know what Light sounds like when he’s sober.” L started to set the sandwich cookies on top of each other, careful not to stack two of the same color. “And he doesn’t slur his speech quite like you’re doing.”

“You think you know me?” Light huffed out. “You don’t know anything about me. You just think that I’m some murderer. That’s what you think of me, right?”

“Light sounds upset.”

“I’m not upset.” Cruel laughter crawled out of L’s phone--fragile from being held inside too long. “I’m never upset. I don’t get upset. I’m a good person.”

Light let the phrase “good person” linger and dissipate in the air. L rubbed his tongue over the roof of his mouth and considered the situation. Speaking to a drunk teenager was low on his list good activities. Yet he was curious where the conversation would bring him. A hint about Kira revealing itself while Light was drunk would be good. Even if nothing explicit came from the conversation, analyzing it later could advance the case quicker.

“I’m a good person.” Light repeated himself, dragging out his words until they squealed from the strain. “How can you think I’m Kira? I’m such a--I’m such a good, moral person. I’m never late to class. I’m kind to people even when they’re awful. I help my sister with her homework. Do you think I’m not good? What do you think about me?”

“This conversation isn’t going to go how Light wants.” L pictured Light, staring at his hand and counting off his best qualities. His entire court case laid out in a bathroom, sloppy and inebriated, while he talked on the phone to the man out for his head. “You should hang up.”

“It’s not hard.” Light snorted with knife-like derision. “Just tell me. Tell me I’m good.”

“I don’t know Light well enough,” L said, “to know if he’s good or not.”

Light responded with a crumbling chuckle then went quiet. Between his breathing was the pound of music and people laughing.

“You want to know something?” Light whispered. L’s interest piqued and he leaned forward despite having no one around to be close to. Would this be a new clue, a new sticky note to attach to the ever growing mental file he kept about Light? His tower wobbled and one green cookie fell.

“Yes,” L said. “What does Light want to tell me?”

“I touch myself to the thought of you.” Light let out a crackling laugh and afterward a ragged breath. “Did you know that about me? Did you guess that, world’s greatest detective?”

L’s skin bristled. He was reminded unhappily of something he’d witnessed years ago. When working a previous homicide case, he found a collection of phone videos taken by the suspect of various animals dying on the road. Later, the suspect turned out to be a killer who set people loose in the forest for him to hun. L figured out in a matter of days like a child’s beginning puzzle. But the videos. He watched them all and each one left him heavy limbed. Those death flinches, that glassy look on every blood stained animal as they crawled toward some dark place to die--these things scratched themselves to the back of his eyelids.

Worst of them all was a five minute long video of a deer hit by a car. All the fur on its side was matted down and covered flat clumped points of blood. It made the most awful wheezing sound and its struggle left L’s throat closed. To watch something die so slow, so cruelly was disquieting. When Light spoke, drunk and alone in that bathroom, L heard a death wheeze in his voice.

“Light shouldn’t--” L tapped his fingers against the side of his teacup. His cookie tower was the height of his pointer finger. “You shouldn’t be on the phone with me. You’ll say something you regret.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Quiet but still audible, L heard the sound of pants unbuttoning. “Just let me talk.”

L didn’t speak. Instead he shut his laptop and waited for whatever came next.

“I used to think about what you looked like.” Slick sounds came through the phone and L sat, knees to his chest, listening to Light start to masturbate. “What I wanted you to look like. I wanted you to be attractive, dark and mysterious. Then I met you and you were so ugly. But I still want you to touch me.”

“When did Light imagine what I looked like?”

“Before we met.” Light strung out his words until they were taut. “Before I saw you or heard you. When you were just a letter on the TV. It’s sort of funny, huh? For me to want a person who’s just a letter. That’s all you are--a letter standing alone.”

“Being alone isn’t terrible,” L said and pressed further on his previous point. “Was this after my first broadcast statement against Kira?”

“Maybe.” A teasing tone in Light’s voice gave L the image of a feral curving smile. Over a thousand miles and he could still see those straight white teeth bared. “You don’t have to be alone, you know.”

“What?” Blinking and shifting in his seat, L stacked a pink sandwich cookie on top of a blue one. “I enjoy being alone.”

“You could have me,” Light ignored what L said and barreled forward. “I want you to sit me on your dick. Sink me down on it until I come.”

The longer Light talked, the more L felt a schism form between his computer file on Light and the boy on the phone. Clean and put together Light Yagami went to school on time and never masturbated while looking at dirty magazines. The boy on the phone with L was a foreign object stabbed through that smooth voice L heard almost everyday. To hear that voice ask to be fucked created a cognitive dissonance which rattled L--two mirror images reflecting back at each other separate only at the edges. He blinked and realized Light was still speaking.

“I imagine you holding me still.” Noises fell out of Light like water drops from a faucet. “Your hands on me, pushing me apart. Telling me what you’re going to do to me.”

“And what is it that I’m going to do to Light?” Voyeuristic interest prompted him to encourage Light, although he doubted his actions were particularly well thought out. Clattering groans broadcast through the phone and L took a drink of tea. It was cold.

“You’re going to break me. You tell me how good I am. What a good slut I am. Tell me now. Tell me how good I am.”

A good slut? Gnawing on his lip, L could almost see the picture Light painted. His own hands, disembodied, holding down Light’s hips and his mouth floating next Light’s ear to whisper sexual language--it was an attractive picture but not one he felt was relevant. Instead, he held the picture at arm’s length.

“I told Light before,” he said. “I can’t give him what he wants.”.

“It’s so hot in here. I’m so fucking hot.” The curse word sent a jolt up L’s spine. He’d never heard Light swear before. At times, he wondered if Light even knew how but to be witness to the expletive falling out through the phone speaker changed his mind. L gnawed on his lip. Part of him lurched in bright red arousal at the sound of Light Yagami saying fuck and he hated it. “Tell me I’m good, Ryuga. Tell me I’m good.”

“Light.”

“Please.” Light sounded horrible, rough and scraping at his own insides. “I want you to say it. Say I’m good, please.”

L saw one image--a deer, limbs twitching and eyes glazed over in panic, trying not to die--and then his mind snapped a shutter lens to present another picture--Light Yagami, pants open and hand cupping himself, with cherry blossom cheeks and desperate eyes. If he stared too long, the two images merged into a morbid vision that left L grasping for his next move. He reached for his tea cup and knocked over his cookie tower. Crumbs flew everywhere while Light whined in his ear.

“Why does Light need me to tell him he’s good?”

“I just need it,” Light said. “I want you to say it. Please. Say it.”

L opened his mouth and jammed a cookie in it. He chewed in slow circular motions while contemplating his options. The logical thing to do would be hanging up and pretending this never happened. The responsible thing to do would be to tell Light to go home, drink water and pretend this never happened. But the one thing he shouldn’t do was the one thing he wanted to do: encourage Light. Keep him talking and squirming. As though playing with a wind up toy, L wanted to twist and twist him until he spun off the table and crashed to the ground. Another person slammed their hand on the door, demanding to be let in, and Light shouted back at them to go find the other bathroom. L considered his options and then chose.

“Light’s--,” L paused and coughed. “Light’s very good. He’s been so good for me.”

A soft sigh flew through sound waves. It touched L’s cheek with butterfly fingers and left his mouth dry. Light’s groans grew steadier, more frequent and higher pitched. His mouth must’ve been hung open, lips just a ring of bruising pink from making so much noise. L envisioned the strings that held Light together popping loose to expose his seams and, possessed by that thought, L let more slick words sink into the phone.

“He’s been so good for me. Telling me about what he wants done to him.” With two fingers, L played with a cookie and roved his eyes over the dark room. One lamp lit his desk and everything else in the room was just outlines--concepts of objects instead of anything real. “What does he want for being so good?”

“Tell me I can come.” Another string untied and left Light’s insides exposed. L wanted to hook his fingers in there, rip away everything until Kira stared back at him. “I want to come.”

“Yes.” L traced the lines of his bed. For a brief moment, he thought he saw it shake with his words. “Light can come now.”

A groan with sharp claws scratched down L’s ear and he bit his lip. Hollow sounds echoed out that sounded like Light had kicked the cabinet doors with his heels. Gradually, Light started to scale back and his voice shrank until it was a small seed. They both sat in the thick silence that filled L’s head with strange thoughts. He wanted more. In some dark part of him, he wanted to be in that bathroom with Light holding him still, nails sunk into his skin enough to tear some away.

“Are you fucking finished in there, Yagami?” An angry man’s voice broke through their bubble of silence. Someone pounded on the door again while multiple voices shouted over each other. “You’ve been hogging this bathroom all night.”

“I’ll be out in one second.” Light shouted back, not bothering to move his head away from the phone. L had to lean away from the speaker but pulled back in as Light spoke softly to him.

“I should go.” A needle threaded through Light’s voice that stitched his body back together. Whatever had been exposed to L closed up, hidden from view once more. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“Yes.” L wormed a finger into his mouth to pick at some bits of cookie caught between his teeth. “It’s fine. Light wasn’t in his right mind.”

“Yeah.” Light took a heavy breath and spoke in a rushed whisper. His voice was a miniature house. “Please. Don’t tell my dad about this.”

“I won’t.”

“Thank you.” The last thread sealed shut and there was no more softness in Light’s voice. “Good night, Ryuga.”

“Good nig--,” L started but Light hung up before he could finish. He sat for a moment, phone pressed to his ear. As his cheek grew sweaty against the screen, L thought of the video of the deer but in reverse. A mirror world where the deer got up, blood lifting from its fur, and fled backward into the woods until it disappeared. He saw the trees swallow it up and then it was gone like he had never seen it at all.

**Author's Note:**

> hey-o. so if ur like "dag dude i wish i could read and enjoy more content from this guy" then u should probably follow my [tumblr](http://translightyagami.tumblr.com/). If you liked what you read, please leave a comment!


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